Christian Marclay's Poster for the 41st Telluride Film Festival Revealed

We're well into June which means, yep, it's already time to start thinking about the fall film festival season. One of the festivals that I'm always anxious to return to is the Telluride Film Festival, entering its 41st year after a rather incredible 40th edition last year (with Gravity, 12 Years a Slave and more). The festival has just revealed its official 2014 poster designed by artist Christian Marclay, featuring ransom-note-like random letters and a collection of film strips. It's an impressive and bold design, I really dig it, so I thought it would be worth sharing as the first reminder that Telluride (and TIFF and Fantastic Fest) are coming up.

Over the past 30 years, Marclay has explored the fusion of fine art and audio cultures, transforming sounds and music into a visible, physical form through performance, collage, sculpture, installation, photography and video. Early examples include the series Recycled Records (1980-86); the Body Mix series (1991-92); Virtuoso (1999); and Snapshots, an ongoing, informal series of photographs that depict elements of sound and onomatopoeia that the artist discovers in everyday situations. "I decided to celebrate celluloid at a time when the old analog medium is being replaced by digital technology," said Marclay. "I have always been interested in outmoded formats such as vinyl records, cassette tapes, or rotary telephones. I also wanted to show how cinema is an art of collage – fragments are collected and assembled to tell a story." Terrific work.